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Family-friendly MEP

Ryszard Legutko, a Polish MEP in the European Conservatives and Reformists group, is in trouble with a court in Poland.

Legutko, who was Poland’s education minister for just three months in 2007, is a former professor of philosophy and has written tomes on ancient Greek thinkers. He also gave a platform to free-thinking Poles before 1989, publishing a samizdat journal.

Now, though, he is newsworthy for less elevated and less liberal thoughts: a court on 18 April ordered him to apologise to two school pupils for calling them “noisy runts spoilt by their parents”. Their offence had been to submit a petition to the government to remove the crucifix from Polish classrooms, a notion that Legutko decried as “a typical snivellers’ yell”.

As well as ordering Legutko to apologise, the court obliged him to pay 5,000 zlotys (€1,200) to charity. Legutko plans to appeal.

It is fortunate that the European Parliament has given him posts in some of its least diplomatically sensitive positions – such as the delegation to Israel, the committee on foreign affairs, and the sub-committee for human rights.